So Metaio was nice enough to upload all of insideAR talks online (wish that the organizers of ISMAR10 will follow suit). However, most of us don’t have a day to spend watching all the talks, so here are some of my favorites (note that I’m a tech head, so your mileage may vary) :
This past week, Metaio held their first insideAR conference and thankfully have uploaded all the videos from the event within a few days. Some interesting stuff there, which I’ll cover tomorrow.
Speaking of Metaio, Tish Shute held another of her in depth interviews, this time with Metaio’s CEO, Thomas Alt
As for this week’s video, we have Sky Canvas, an iPhone application with a brilliant concept behind it, from Shiodome Innovation Studio, Japan. A part of their PaPaCo Design Project, Shiodome tried to create an application that can be played together by a father and his son. With Sky Canvas, the two can form clouds in the shape of animals by tapping and blowing air to the microphone. Unfortunately, the app is not available outside of Japan, so I can’t really test it, but as you surely have understood by now, I dig the concept:
Flying drones, electronic musician and virtual girlfriends, all in this week’s linkfest:
170 years after introducing the first postage stamp, Britain now introduces the first augmented stamp (though it requires German technology from Metaio)
For this week’s video we’ve got yet another futuristic vision, this time by German designer Björn Matthes. In his diploma project, Araproject, Matthes adds an energetic urban twist to augmented reality:
Have a beautiful week, happy Eid-ul-Fitr and Rosh Hashanah.
I hate August. It’s too darn hot over here. Luckily there a few cool and refreshing augmented reality stories this week:
Lester of Augmented Planet on why augmented reality glasses are 20 years away. I sadly have to agree. It’s another reason why people should consider publicly-installed AR projectors has a viable option.
Damon Hernandez continues with his video interviews series, this time with the “AR magician”, Marco Tempest (with some behind the scenes at some of his magics).
This week’s video is of a year old, yet cool project by Karolina Sobecka with software development by Jim George. Sniff is a projected virtual dog that interacts with people passing it on the street. You can find lots more detail over Sobecka’s site (where you can watch other fun projector based projects, like Chase). [via Augmentology]
I recently participated as a judge in the Junaio 2010 Dev Contest. After a good debate, the panel of judges picked the winner — archINFORM. The channel gives the user information about architectural structures in an AR view port. Augmented reality fits the use of this channel because it’s an immediate need one might have while walking around, and sightseeing often involves picture taking so why not use your smartphone to learn more about those ancient buildings.
If you’re wanting to make in impact in Junaio, or with any AR app, try to consider why you’re using augmented reality in the first place. archINFORM won because it was a natural extension of our everyday activities. It added to the architectural database by making it visual. Taking other popular applications and just linking them through Junaio, or other services, doesn’t lend itself to a useful product.
And I’m hoping Metaio decides to do another contest now that Glue is live. I think the potential and creative applications could be quite interesting and I hope they give me a chance to judge again because I enjoyed the discussion with the other judges.
This linkfest has nothing to do with Justin Bieber, and everything to do with augmented reality news bites from the last week. I’m just checking if the mere inclusion of Mr. Bieber in the title will generate more hits.
I’m terribly late on this, but apparently on ARE 2010, Georgia Tech previewed their open source and open standards Kamra Mobile AR Browser. Have to thank Chris Grayson for bringing it to my attention.
Samsung’s Bada mobile OS seems to be the hip place for AR games development. This time it’s our pals at int13 with their release of ARDefender game.
Metaio is holding a one day long conference called insideAR. I usually don’t promote such events, but they got me when they bundled it with Oktoberfest. Augmented reality and Beer, a match made in heaven?
This week’s video is a promotion video for Sekai Camera. Tonchidot, the company behind this veteran AR browser recently got a $5M from Japan’s telecom giant KDDI (though some claim that KDDI actually bought Tonchidot). And if that’s not enough, Tonchidot announced the creation of social AR game. The future looks bright for those guys:
No over-the-shoulder backside check, but it’s better than staring at a catalog or webpage.
“This is the first truly instant online dressing room and as opposed to other augmented reality applications no markers or uploads needed,” said Noora Guldemond, head of sales & marketing for metaio. “We believe this application provides an enhanced interactive online shopping experience for the consumer. We are very excited to be working with Hearst Magazines Digital Media on delivering this unique shopping tool.”
Another bounty of delicious links awaits those who read the weekly linkfest:
A very early release of Robert Rice’s Mirascape is online. For the moment it’s Android only, but apparently the iPhone version is waiting approval, and once it hits the appstore I’ll write a full review of it.
This week’s video is of Junaio Glue. Nothing special, just a nice demonstration of marker less tracking on a non flat surface. Or in other words, the coolest coffee mug I’ve seen yet:
Short linkfest this time, due to some prior engagements. Still, I think you’ll find some treasures among today’s links:
A very fine piece on Adbusters, debating whether augmented reality gives us a false sense of activism while we actually succumb to the cruelty of reality.
Facebook my be working on mobile augmented reality features (which is probably only going to be a tiny part of their location based services).
I’ve never quite understood why would anyone play a 3d version of Tetris, but if you enjoy such an activity, you may want to augment it a bit.
If you are a CS graduate you may have encountered ACM. Usually they put their articles behind a pay-wall, but not this one – Mainstreaming augmented reality.
Video of the week is of a new AR game just released for the iPhone, Android, Symbian operating system (yes, such a thing exist), called AR! Pirates. Created by Optricks Media, best known for those augmented Bamzookis, the game play is not much more sophisticated than ye olde paratrooper game, but heck, it’s probably your best option to drown pirate ships with your phone. It costs £0.99, and you can read more about it on Augmented Planet.
This week will go down in history as the week vision-based AR mobile applications made their first move on the iPhone platform, and you’ll find plenty of those in the linkfest. Is this the (very welcomed) end for webcam based AR?
Ben&Jerry’s though had gone full-monty and lets you see augmented version of their ice cream tubs (see video below) via their Moo Vision app. Created by Circ.us and Patched Reality, it’s unfortunately only available in the US appstore so I’m unable to try it out.
However, I was able to try out ARSoccer but was fairly disappointed. This one, and a very similar minded Upsies (not yet available) let you kick a virtual ball. That’s assuming you have white floor and dark trousers. I actually enjoyed it more to bounce the ball off random furniture, but it still not worth the buck.
As promised, here’s Ben&Jerry’s Moo Vision. Looking cool, but what’s that thing about chickens being in my ice cream? I want my ice cream to be poultry free, if you don’t mind!
Games Alfresco 